(CNN) - The bad news is that this long speech had too many words. The good news is that many of them were "I." A long list of stuff will not change the narrative for this president tonight. I would have advised him to give a shorter speech about bigger things, instead of a longer one about smaller things.

And I wish he'd given a speech that implied some change of direction, something to prove he'd gotten the message the American people have been sending him. I didn't hear that tonight.

Hey! Why is he attacking pundits? Those of us who sweat under hot lights crafting cute one-liners and spewing sound bites – are we not Americans, too? What would he replace us with: people who actually know something?

(CNN) - Interesting – Obama just associated his efforts to restrain nuclear weapons with Ronald Reagan. Unexpected – but some of Reagan's policy advisers like Martin Anderson and Secretary of State George Schultz, now at the Hoover Institution, might agree. I wonder how this parallel will be greeted by the contemporary right and left.

Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama says he will work with Congress and the U.S. military to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that bars gay men and lesbians from openly serving in the military.

(CNN) - The same president who yearned for less partisanship tonight also resorted to it without hesitation a few sentences later, blaming his problems on his predecessor, one long year into his own administration.

That same president who yearned to reduce deficits also called for a huge expansion of government and a bagful of expensive new Washington programs. The same president who said, "We can't wage a perpetual campaign," just brought in his campaign manager to do exactly that. And the same president, who said it was urgent to reduce the deficit, said we would start next year.